Search form

Search

Sign up

Help protect the places we love, the values we share

Optional Member Code

In our emails, sent once or twice a week, you'll receive:
• alerts on new threats to Pennsylvania's environment
• opportunities to join other Pennsylvanians on urgent actions
• updates on the decisions that impact our environment
• resources to help you create a cleaner, greener future

100% Renewable Energy

Imagine being able to power our lives without harming the environment. Imagine our country producing and consuming energy while we enjoy healthy, livable communities. We have the power to give kids growing up today a livable future. That’s why we're calling for Pennsylvania and the nation to make a commitment to 100% renewable energy.

100% Clean. 100% Possible.

Burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal has polluted our air, water and land for decades. Now it’s changing our climate, even faster than scientists feared it would. But we can have healthier communities right now and a livable future for kids growing up today. To get there, we need to transform the way we produce and consume energy.

Some cities around the country like Greensburg, Kan., Burlington, Vt. and Aspen, Colo., have already achieved 100% renewable energy.

Going 100% renewable is 100% possible.

This has dovetailed with solar power installations tripling in America in just the last two years — there is a new home or business going solar every one and a half minutes. In many states, wind power is now cheaper than gas or coal. Clean energy keeps growing faster, with prices for consumers and businesses dropping lower than even the most optimistic industry predictions of just a few years ago.

But we can do more, and we must do more to stave off the worst effects of climate change.

We need to keep building momentum

It’s time to stop letting some slow-moving politicians drag their feet, and start pushing them to step up and lead.

It’s time to sweep past the big energy interests — from Big Oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron to utilities like Duke Energy and Pacific Gas & Electric, from climate deniers in Congress to the Koch brothers — that are not only standing in the way, but using their financial might and political clout to roll back renewable energy’s progress.

Join our call, and help your community go 100% renewable.

The more people who join our call for 100% renewable power, the more local, state, national and corporate leaders will step up and take action that will make a difference now and get us on the right track for the future.

PennEnvironment Lobby day 2017.

Solutions can't wait

We can’t wait any longer: Scientists say we must stop burning fossil fuels by 2050 in order to our spare kids growing up today from the devastating impacts of climate change.
And why should we wait?

Why wait for healthier communities with cleaner air and water when we can have them today?

Why wait, when we can start changing the conversation about how we produce and consume energy — so it’s no longer a question of whether we’ll get to 100% renewable power, but how fast?

Why wait, when America has the responsibility, the ingenuity and the will to start leading the world to a 100% renewable future right now?

Steven Gilbert

We’ve got the power

We’re ready for this. PennEnvironment and our national network at Environment America have been working aggressively to promote solar and wind power, and energy efficiency and conservation at the state and local levels. We’ve won clean energy policies, from pro-solar initiatives to clean cars programs to renewable energy standards, all of which are driving down the costs of wind and solar power, and driving down carbon pollution.

100% Clean Energy Updates

Today the Obama administration finalized new clean car standards that will double the fuel efficiency of today’s vehicles by 2025, drastically reducing emissions of carbon pollution and cutting oil use in Pennsylvania and nationwide. A recent joint analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Union of Concerned Scientists projects that by 2030 in Pennsylvania alone, the standards will cut carbon pollution from vehicles by 8.4 million metric tons—the equivalent of the annual pollution of 1,285, of today’s vehicles—and save 720 million gallons of fuel.

Ten months after Tropical Storm Lee led to record flooding that devastated the Susquehanna Valley, a new PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center report confirms that extreme rainstorms and snowstorms are happening 52 percent more frequently in Pennsylvania since 1948. Based on an analysis of state data from the National Climatic Data Center, the new report found that heavy downpours or snowstorms that used to happen once every 12 months on average in the state now happen every 7.9 months on average. Moreover, the biggest storms are getting bigger. The largest annual storms in Pennsylvania now produce 23 percent more precipitation, on average, than they did 65 years ago.

Global warming is happening now and its effects are being felt in the United States and around the world. Among the expected consequences of global warming is an increase in the heaviest rain and snow storms, fueled by increased evaporation and the ability of a warmer atmosphere to hold more moisture.

As Pennsylvanians get ready for summer road trips, a PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center report finds that cleaner, more fuel efficient cars would significantly slash oil consumption and global warming pollution across the state. The report, Summer on the Road: Going Farther on a Gallon of Gas, was released as the Obama administration is on the verge of finalizing fuel efficiency and global warming pollution standards for cars and light trucks that achieve a 54.5 mpg standard by 2025.

As summer approaches, the dangers of our continued dependence on oil are apparent everywhere we look. Our oil dependence risks our environment to disasters like oil spills, endangers our climate with the nearly 2 billion metric tons of global warming pollution from oil consumption each year, and threatens our families’ health. If our cars and trucks today met the proposed 54.5 mpg standard, Pennsylvanians would cut gasoline consumption by 603 million gallons over the course of this summer, slashing global warming pollution by more than 5.3 million metric tons and saving consumers over $2.

The price of solar power has fallen in two decades from nearly $10 a watt to about $3. By 2030, computer scientist Ramez Naam predicted, the price could drop to just 50 cents a watt. Four years later, in the spring of this year, Naam revisited his post and admitted his prediction had been wrong. It was far too conservative. The price of solar power had already hit the 50-cent threshold.

In the sunniest locations in the world, building a new solar-power plant now costs less than coal or natural gas, even without subsidies, and within six years, this will be true of places with average sunlight, too.